Most city planners have yet to prepare for climate-related risks and the consequences
Study assesses climate change vulnerability in urban America
WASHINGTON, DC (Aug. 31, 2016) -- Flooding due to rising ocean levels. Debilitating heat waves that last longer and occur more frequently. Rising rates of diseases caused by ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes, such as Lyme disease, Chikungunya, and Zika. Increasing numbers of Emergency Room visits for asthma attacks due to higher levels of ground-level ozone. Impacts of climate change such as these will affect cities across the country.
One of the first efforts to systematically assess how cities are preparing for climate change shows that city planners have yet to fully assess their vulnerability to climate change, leaving serious risks unaddressed. In their evaluations to-date, they see infrastructure and risks to specific human populations as the primary areas of concern. Despite these concerns, expert assessments of urban climate vulnerability often do not address the real risks that local planners face.
Sabrina McCormick, PhD, an Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University, says her research suggests that national experts must make changes in their approach to ensure that their assessments are useful to urban planners and other city managers responsible for safeguarding their populations' health and safety and access to energy and natural resources like drinking water.
World Trade Centre Physics - why constant acceleration disproves progressive collapse
The decisive question concerning the collapse of the Twin Towers was why were the upper sections able to fall through the lower all the way to the ground without its fall ever being arrested or even decelerating at any time? The argument that such behaviour was possible without the aid of explosives relies solely on technical articles that have been indisputably refuted.
For the booklet click here
Dollar Disaster Looms? China and Russian Currencies Break Away
The US was able to do so much damage because of its virtually unlimited spending power. It’s been able to prosecute endless wars and imprison up to 5% of its adult population at any one time. Now things are changing.
Over 30,000 thousand Dead Terrorist Corpses Still Litter Syria
The authorities are having problems sending the bodies back to their country of origin.
http://sputniknews.com/
The Economic Collapse
Global Recession? The Canadian Economy Shrinks At The Fastest Pace Since The Last Financial Crisis
Things have not been this bad for the Canadian economy since the last global recession. During the second quarter of 2016, Canada’s GDP contracted at a 1.6 percent annualized rate. That was the worst number in seven years, and it was even worse than most analysts were projecting. This comes at a time when bad news is pouring in from all corners of the global economy. While things in the United States are still relatively stable for the moment, the same cannot be said for much of the rest of the planet. Canada in particular has been hit very hard by the collapse in oil prices, and the massive wildfire in northern Alberta back in May certainly did not help things. The following comes from the BBC…
The recent drop in GDP was larger than analysts had projected, but not far off the predicted 1.5% loss.“[The figure] could have been worse, given the hit from the wildfire, and clearly confirms the disappointing downward trend in exports over the last few months,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.In May, wildfires devastated the parts of northern Alberta where much of Canada’s oil and natural gas is produced.
For many years, high oil prices and booming exports enabled the Canadian economy to significantly outperform the U.S. economy. But now conditions have changed dramatically, and all of the economic bubbles up in Canada are starting to burst. This includes the housing bubble, as we have seen home sales in the hottest markets such as Vancouver drop through the floor late in the summer. In fact, it is being reported that home sales during the first two weeks of August in British Columbia were down a whopping 51 percent on a year over year basis.
Do you remember the housing bubble in the U.S. that helped fuel the last financial crisis? Well, a very similar bubble is now bursting up in Canada, and some investors have positioned themselves to make a tremendous amount of money when the whole thing comes violently crashing down. The following comes from Wolf Richter…
This summer, famed short seller Marc Cohodes came out of retirement (he now raises chickens on a farm in Sonoma County, CA, and sells the eggs for a fortune in San Francisco) and jumped into ring with a number of interviews on TV and in the print media, and this too rattled some nerves – largely because it hit home.“I think it’s a money laundering-induced market,” he said as we reported at the time. “Where the local politicians, or the BC Liberals, are kept or in cahoots
with the real estate brokers, developers, lawyers, that angle. And they have sought Chinese money to keep the market propped up and it won’t last,” he said. “China has capital controls on, and Vancouver has become the money laundering mecca of either the world or North America, and something is going to change and change drastically.
The Economic Collapse
